Companies building tools we love with a strong culture of working remotely

by Darren Buckner | 18 Mar 2015

Working remotely is fun, rewarding and productive. Increasingly, companies large and small are embracing the work from anywhere, anytime culture. This type of work style, however, can present challenges that traditional in-office teams don’t face. How do we stay connected and organized? Celebrating success and tracking our progress can look different. What about scaling in a remote working environment?

We’ve discovered that some of our favorite tools are built by distributed teams. Here are just a few of the products and services we use often and the companies with remote workers building them. Check them out!

Buffer

What they do:Buffer is a social media tool that helps you manage and schedule your social posts across several platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and Google Plus.

Why we love them: One our favorite fully distributed teams. Bootstrapping a startup means our time is stretched thin. Buffer helps us stay connected and ensures the right post goes out at the right time on the right social media platforms.

Github

What they do: A code sharing and version control platform.

Why we love them: We use Github to store our source code, track issues and prioritize our dreams. Beyond that, Github helps us keep track of old features and stay organized while we create new ones. Github is essential for what we do.

Sqwiggle

What they do: Remote team collaboration. Connect with your fellow teammates in the browser or apps via video conferencing and chat.

Why we love them: Staying connected is often a challenge with distributed teams. Their team collaboration app is simple to use and lets us quickly see who’s “in the office” or offline. Feeling more connected to our remote team is super important to us and Sqwiggle helps us build those connections.

Digital Ocean

What they do: A simple and fast cloud hosting provider built for developers.

Why we love them: Workfrom.co is hosted on Digital Ocean servers which have allowed us to scale within budget. Their cart-blanche servers allow us to play with a myriad of technologies without being locked into any stack or programming language and their customer support is awesome.

Product Hunt

What they do: Curated list of new products, updated daily. Did you see Workfrom when it was hunted?

Why we love them: Not only is Product Hunt a great place to be introduced to cool new products and tools, it has helped us gain an early audience and we’ve made some good connections through the platform. Early adopters have let us know what they’d like to see, what worked for them, and what didn’t. Free feedback and connections like this is crucial for a startup.

Automattic

What they do: They built WordPress, which powers over 22% of the web. That’s amazing alone.

Why we love them: Workfrom.co started on WordPress. It allowed us to get a proof of concept up quickly with little investment. And from that we were able to test our product ideas and market early and often. Automattic is a leader in the location independent lifestyle.

Speek

What they do: Super simple conferencing calls. Share a URL and chat on any phone or browser without having to install a thing. We use them for outside and team calls often.

Why we love them: To quickly get a conferencing call going for sales, partners, and teammates. It’s so simple and easy to share without having to worry if folks have remembered to download and install software. Connections are clear and stable. Frustrated with the quality of other conferencing products? Check out Speek.

Zapier

What they do: Lets you build workflows, business processes and connect your apps without any programming. Need to connect Tumblr with Twitter? There’s a Zap for that!

Why we love them: We love to test new systems and with Zapier, we can quickly integrate new products and systems into our workflows with little investment. Our data and processes are automated across the various cloud services we use — so we can spend less time on administrative stuff and more time being productive.

Workfrom

What we do:Workfrom is a community of people and places helping one another discover, share and support the best coffee shops, bars, cafes, coworking spots and other shared workspaces. We don’t have an office, choosing instead to work from the places shared on our site.

Why we love our community: Our community has sourced some of the best bars, coffee shops, cafes and coworking spaces to get work done all over the world. We use workfrom.co daily to find new and inspiring places to get work done while we roam.

Thanks for the Zapier love, Darren! I personally have Workfrom in my bookmarks bar so anytime I’m in another city I can find a good coffee shop to work. I live in Nashville most of the time, need to get on the ground here to help showcase Nashville for others.

Tips

2. While we find that most folks don't mind being in the background of photos, don't sweat it if someone objects. Thank ‘em and find another shot or go back to working/studying.

“Excuse me. Do you mind if I take a picture of this area with you working in the background? It’s for a project I’m a part of that connects people like us with great spaces to work, like this one.”

We’re not using community sourced photography for commercial purposes, so you needn’t worry about documented permission or release forms.

3. Submitted photos will be attributed to you unless you state otherwise.

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